by Nillu Nasser
It took all of her strength to act normally when all she wanted was to hold her parents to account. Now was not the time. She needed to map out all the pieces on the board before waging war. The chants she had used to maintain her sanity resurfaced.
I can do this. I am enough. I am loved.
Who really loved her? She could not live under the same roof as her parents if she unleashed her anger, so instead, she corked it. Their secret became hers, a sleeping lion in an unhappy home that any one of them could, at any moment, prod into a roaring menace. However, she had grown wise to their tricks; the strings of the puppet had been severed. She waited impatiently, daydreaming about what precise words she would use to shame them into apologising and realising the extent of her hurt.
At the same time, she found herself looking for Akash in the corners of the city, on her way to work, in the queues at the market, in the faces of strangers. She didn’t know what she would say to him if she saw him. She willed it. She feared it. She reread his letter until she had etched each word onto her soul, until the words branded her skin.
We knew each other once, a long time ago. I chased false gods and pushed away everything that was good.
She kneaded her finger where her wedding ring had once sat. How could she not have realised it was him?
They say everything happens for a reason, but I have found that to be a deceit. Suffering is something we dig through until we feel whole again.
His words had comforted her like none other. Could it be true, what Ruhi had said, that Akash wanted to try to resurrect their marriage, that he hadn’t wilfully abandoned her?
Jaya had joy in her life. She enjoyed her own company. She had a small circle of people she cared about, but despite it all, she wanted more. She wanted love. A selfish love, made just for her. Could two broken people fit perfectly together? One thing Jaya knew for certain: she wanted to find out. She hurried to the lobby of the theatre, and checked that the scrap of cloth remained in the window. There, tucked behind the poster, was the flag, blood-red, a symbol of rebirth or destruction.
Akash caught sight of the red rag in the theatre window: Jaya’s message to him. His heart pumped a jagged rhythm as he approached the front desk, although his anonymity shielded him. He deposited the letter in the hands of a plump woman who worked at the theatre, her makeup like a geisha gone wrong. Soraya’s locket sagged around his neck, skimming the light fuzz of hair at the top of his chest. He stroked it like a talisman, left the letter with the over-painted woman and hid in plain sight amongst jostling pedestrians at the busy junction, hoping for another glimpse of his wife.
His wife. How strange for it to be true, though he no longer knew her at all.
Now, he watched, transfixed, as Jaya emerged onto the street. She pressed her weight against the glass door, crossing the threshold he himself had stepped over not an hour previously. Curled within her fingers was a letter: his letter.
A man—perhaps no more than thirty-five—approached from behind Jaya, startling her. Only a few metres separated Akash from her. He strained his ears to hear.
“Can we talk?” said the man. “It’s been really awkward between us.” He rested a hand on her shoulder, too familiar, as if they had history.
“Oh, go away, Ravi,” said Jaya.
“You still hanker after him, don’t you? Your husband. There’s unfinished history for you. That’s why you’re not giving me a chance. But likely he’s with another woman. There’s not one soul mate. You—” he simpered.
Akash hated him. He recognised the flames of jealousy licking at him, the need to dart forward, intervene, push the man away.
His wife rounded on the man, a cool indifference emanating from every pore. “No is no.”
The man shrugged and walked away, stiff as a board, a man crushed in the mating ritual.
Akash felt a flicker of hope. Did Jaya really still think about him? She was so close, he could almost touch her. He drank in the sight of her: hair piled high in a bun, strands escaping to frame her face, earthy lipstick and kohl under her eyes. She considered the letter in her hand, studying the lettering, then stuffed it into her shoulder bag without ceremony. A second later, she retrieved it, and re-entered the lobby of her workplace to sit down.
He couldn’t help himself. He drew nearer, nearer, until his nose almost pressed against the glass. He needed to scrutinise the emotions sweeping across her face. Did Jaya realise the words were his? Did he stand a chance with her? Could she redeem him?
She was engrossed, her bag discarded on the floor at her feet, her hands clutching the letter. He surely had a few minutes to stay here, staring at her.
What a mistake.
Perhaps she sensed the intensity of his gaze. Maybe he made a sound in his eagerness, audible to all and sundry, just not to him, so captivated he was. Regardless of the reason, Jaya glanced up and, for the first time in two decades, through smeared glass and marketing posters, a husband met his wife’s eyes.
Jaya looked up from the letter, drawn by an invisible thread. A man at the window gawked at her with such fervent attention, she felt like a moth pinned against velvet. Partially obscured, he stood curved and sallow, dressed in dull colours. It couldn’t be Ravi. The man moved into the small space between advertisements, and suddenly the world blurred and realigned, as if someone had fiddled with the aperture setting on a camera.
Her breathing came in short machine gun bursts as their tired eyes met. The letter fell from her hands, drifting through the air like a disoriented seagull. She stood, electrified and depleted all at once, her balance off-centre.
The man entered the lobby and edged towards her with jittery steps, his path hesitant.
For a moment, Jaya considered running and hiding. She was not ready for this. Maybe, she had been ready since the day he left. Her gut burned with anxiety while her eyes drank in the sight of her husband: a thinning head of hair, bedraggled, poorly fitting clothes, a general air of uncleanliness, arms hanging limply by his side. This man looked beaten and instead of schadenfreude, Jaya felt only sadness.
He reached her. So close that she could hear the sound of his breath, see the lift of his chest. He opened his mouth to speak then shut it again, as if his words had been stolen, as if they did not live up to this moment of their meeting.
Jaya was tempted to close her eyes, to forget the sight of her aged husband and drown in the promise of their younger days. Then she remembered she was no ordinary woman; she was a warrior. Whatever lies her father had told, Akash had still betrayed her.
“It’s been 21 years, Akash.” She willed her body not to reveal any weakness. She compelled it to be rigid rather than soft, a steel frame he wouldn’t dare to touch. She couldn’t bear that.
His voice came out as a rasp. “21 years, 7 months, 3 weeks, 2 days.”
Jaya’s core softened. How much she wanted to believe he had counted the time, that he had cared.
“Can you forgive me?” He reached out to cup her cheek, rubbing the calloused pad of his thumb across her skin.
Somewhere on the periphery, Bushra knocked things over in her rush to disappear into the theatre, recognising their need to be alone.
Jaya’s eyes filled with tears and she hated herself for it. She noticed the swirls of hair on Akash’s cheeks. “No,” she said, pushing his hand away. Her skin burned where he had caressed it. “Where have you been? I searched for you for years.”
“I am sorry. I mourned you. Not a day passed that I didn’t think of you. I didn’t know you had survived.”
She needed to break their eye contact. Her eyes swept frantically from one side to another. She felt compelled to stay, to lance the boil of their separation, but the air was thinner here, her mind saturated.
Akash stood still, a robot man, waiting for her next move.
Jaya went on the offensive, infinitely preferable to her than vulnerability. “All this time, you were in cahoots with Ruhi. More lies, Akash?”
“It was a trial.
To see if I am worthy of you.” His irises had yellowed over the years. His hands rose, zombie-like towards her, as if he couldn’t resist touching her.
Jaya stepped back so the crease behind her knees pressed into the couch. “You’re not,” she spat.
Was he assessing her every mark? Did she come up short after all these years? For a moment, she suffered embarrassment at how passage of time meddles with the mortal frame. She shrugged off her shame. She had nothing to apologise for. She searched his person, letting her eyes wander over every inch of him, curling her lips into a sneer to show him how little he meant to her. He wore a cloak of melancholy, but she was certain it was not for her. The mother of his child had died, after all. A flare of jealousy ignited within her. It metamorphosed, a green changeling, imbuing her with strength she sorely needed.
“There you were playing happy families with your lover and son.”
He jerked back, a swell of first distress, then pain registering on his face. She didn’t regret using words meant to hurt, but even as she did it, she knew she was hurting herself.
“I was her friend, that’s all. This time,” said Akash. His voice caught, travelling up the octave. “You know about Arjun?”
“It wasn’t hard to guess he was yours. I’m glad at least one of us had a child,” she said.
Still he did not rise to the bait.
Jaya was no longer certain she wanted explanations. She wanted war. Violence. Something monumental to fill the gap of his missing years. This was too much, too little. Jaya’s flight instinct kicked in. She crouched to pick up her bag, instinctively pushing the letter into it, wishing she had the mettle to tear it to shreds as he watched, but she couldn’t let those words evaporate. Every fibre of her being called out to read his letter, to have something to hold of his, despite it all. She pushed past him, deliberately aggressive, her moments jerky, unfeminine. Watch me rage, she thought. I am no doormat. You made that mistake once.
He grabbed her arm as she thrust past him.
Jaya screamed in fury, not caring who might hear, not caring this was her workplace. “Let go of me. Nothing can destroy me anymore. Not even you,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I’ll never do anything to hurt you, Jaya, but you need to hear this.” He trembled. “I am sorry. You asked once if I loved you, and I didn’t answer. I love you. I don’t know why I didn’t know it or say it, but it’s true. I love you. Failing you is the biggest regret of my life. Let me in. Let me prove it to you.”
How easy it would be to fall into his arms, to wish away the years of hurt. But that would be an illusion. In reality, this broken man could not be hers, and she could not be his. They had gone too far in separate directions.
Jaya shook herself free, a growl taking shape in her throat. It erupted, dripping in venom. “You left me to burn. It’s over, Akash. It was over a long time ago.” The words made her powerful, but they rang hollow. Inside, in a moment of clarity, she admitted it had been her decision to light the match, not his. She couldn’t hold him responsible.
The pain of the realisation rocked her, and she turned away from Akash. She sped away, as fast as she could, through the glass door and onto the street, clumsy and blinded by tears that smudged her kohl. She brushed her hand impatiently across her face and it came away marred by black smudges. An overweight, panda-eyed woman running down the road. How dignified, she thought bitterly.
She pressed on, demons at her back, hoping that Akash wouldn’t follow. Familiar buildings jutted out of the ground like decaying teeth. In one crowded patch, child beggars with pleading eyes and quick fingers clutched at her. The unfairness of life weighed on her like a knife at her throat. The same thoughts snaked through her head—cries against abandonment and betrayal—like a record on loop, and she stumbled across the only truth she knew. She loved him. Despite it all, despite her mistakes and his, all these years she hadn’t been able to let him go.
Still, she didn’t require male attention to be happy. All those ghazals romanticising heartbreak. She knew better than that. Heartbreak was not to be coveted; heartbreak felt like death. Experience taught her that loving someone was not always enough. She slowed to a walk and lost herself in the crowd. There, in the midst of couples, families, and friends, Jaya’s ring finger felt the heavy weight of nothingness.
Chapter 36
Akash woke as the sun’s rays threaded crimson ribbons across the sky. He groaned as he opened his eyes to the blanket of bricks above him. His night’s sleep had been fretful, woven with glimpses of a retreating woman. He chased after her, trying in vain to catch the train of her sari, but she evaded him. He stumbled after her, through a concrete landscape that morphed into a graveyard, a man impeded by his physicality, his legs buckled and bent from years on the streets, his back bowed. When he caught her in profile he recoiled to see a patchwork woman, the nose and chin Soraya’s, the lips irrevocably Jaya’s.
Flashes of the previous day’s encounter with Jaya rushed him as soon as his consciousness returned. He didn’t know how to regain Jaya’s trust, but it gave him hope that she’d at least retrieved the letter.
He cracked his neck, elevating it slightly off the shirt he had bundled underneath his head as a makeshift pillow. His body ached. Each day, when sunrise came, he was as stiff as a corpse. He didn’t crave luxury, but he felt the cold more as he aged. The stiffness eased only with a dip in the lapping salt water of the sea.
Tariq lay a few yards further on a blanket of his own. In colder, wetter weather, they sometimes slept side by side, each benefitting from the other’s body heat. Sometimes, they were taunted about homosexuality by unfeeling men who took their own home comforts for granted. They reminded Akash of the schoolyard bullies from his childhood, who belittled others to bolster their own tarnished egos. Their insults didn’t bother him. He knew who he was, and he knew what he had to do to survive. As a man who longed for love, he could not imagine that love in any of its forms should be frowned at.
He reached out his foot to kick Tariq, gently first, then with more urgency. “Rise and shine.”
Irritated, Tariq shoved him away. He stretched so that his limbs popped out from beneath his blanket in a star shape, muttering all the while. This ritual occurred daily, as familiar to Akash as if they were a married couple.
He was more naturally suited to early wake ups than Tariq. Years on the streets had schooled him to be an early riser. He understood instinctively that it was far better to rise before the city woke, rather than be caught defenceless in the folds of sleep should anything happen. Safety and privacy were commodities appreciated mostly by their absence.
“Seriously, wake up. Janghir Saheb is expecting us. Time to pack up our things, make ourselves presentable,” said Akash, already rolling up his blanket and setting aside his wash things, a shrivelled loofah, his towel, a small blade they kept both to shave and as defence. He tossed his loofah at Tariq. It landed between his eyebrows and ricocheted to the side.
“Okay, okay, I’m getting up.” His cough erupted and he sat up, rocking forwards and backwards, clawing at his throat, as if plagued by bees. “Man, you really know how to spoil a man’s sleep,” he spluttered. “I’m not sure what I was dreaming but I’m pretty sure it was delicious.” He peeped underneath the blanket and motioned between his legs. “See, standing tall, just like a soldier.”
Akash pulled a face. “Keep that to yourself, yaar.” He had woken in the night often to Tariq pleasuring himself, and had always pretended to be asleep. Who was he to take away a few moments release? Still, a man needed to do some things in private. The episodes niggled at him, left him with a sense of the animal needs not met on the streets, and how sometimes, baser instincts escaped society’s polite grip and emerged, defiant and unapologetic. He locked away his thoughts in a box. They couldn’t afford to be distracted this morning. They had a purpose. “Come on, man. Hop to it.”
Tariq stood and they worked in tandem, packing their meagre belongings into carrier bag
s, both men carrying a lesser amount than a normal person might bring home from a grocery store: cooking ware, a couple of worn books, blankets, a tarpaulin and a spare set of clothes. Then they slung their towels around their necks and headed to the sea to wash. Once dry and changed, each took turns using the small blade against their cheeks until they were presentable.
Janghir Saheb and his new store in Bandra West awaited them.
Arjun returned home from the restaurant early the next day, physically and mentally weary. At least he hadn’t floundered at the restaurant. He knew the business as well as his mother had. His shoulders ached and he longed to crawl into bed and close his eyes. The sun’s blood-orange rays kissed the rooftop of the house. He dragged his feet towards the elaborate arch that covered the front door. Violet geraniums edged with a white trim spilled out over the edge of the plant pots on either side of the pillared entrance. Sadness stung him. Hardly a month had passed since his mother had laboured over these pots, soil smudges across her cheek and crusted under her fingernails.
He spied Muna stretched out on a deckchair by the pool. Leela played on a blanket nearby. Arjun fought the impulse to disappear inside the cool darkness of the house and trudged over to greet them. Leela’s downy head expelled the heavy sweet-sour scent of breastmilk. Arjun closed his eyes and lingered there, drinking in the smell of his daughter as he squatted. Then, he trailed a hand over his wife’s leg as he claimed the lounger next to her.
“How was your day?” said Muna.
He shrugged, kicked off his shoes and socks, and undid the buttons at his cuff and nape. “That’s better,” he said, breathing out.
Muna took his hand in hers and traced the pad of her thumb in slow circles on his palm. He tensed his hand, as if to pull it away. Muna held firm, coaxing him with the pressure of her fingers.
